IT'S TIME TO THINK ABOUT REFORMATTING YOUR FILM COLLECTIONS - Before
it's too late.
also worth reading:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html
"Imagine holding a beautiful, dusty, illustrated volume of Shakespeare
printed in the 1700s, a calligraphic message from its long-dead owner
inscribed on the inside cover, and throwing it straight in the trash. I've
been there, more than once. I could have kept it and maybe gotten a few
hundred dollars for it on eBay, if my supervisor wasn't watching with
specific orders to prevent me from doing that."
I saw this working for a government department where everything was being
'modernised' - all our old records, some by historically significant figures
were being digitised then the originals destroyed.
I'm all for digitizing. It means the digital copies of all those records
were quickly accessible without having to wait for a folder to be retrieved
from the records department, and in some cases posted to a remote location -
each time risking further damage or potential loss of the original, the fact
was, if this was to be the main purpose for having digital copies all would
be OK.
The problem as I, and those who originally proposed the system saw it is
that now the digital copies are all that most people see, it's a case of
'out of sight, out of mind' and the originals somehow became ephemeral.
Thus the destruction began..
Of course plenty of these digital files how now been "lost" and the
subsequent 'woops, mistake soz, won't happen again' might placate the
director of such and such a department but what has been lost is gone for
good. I know, I know.. decent backup regimes, competent staff yadda yadda..
but these things happen.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19656_5-lost-photos-that-could-have-changed-history_p2.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106637066
"An exhaustive, three-year search for some tapes that contained the original
footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk has concluded that they were probably
destroyed during a period when NASA was erasing old magnetic tapes and
reusing them to record satellite data" - and so were the copies the aussies
found and sent to NASA.. great.
I still maintain staring at a backup tape / hard drive and deciding what's
on it is unimportant is a lot easier than holding an original book by
Shakespear in one's grubby hands and deciding that it would burn well.
